Celebrating recycling efforts at Claypit Hill School

On Nov. 23, the Claypit Hill School gym filled up with students and parents for its Thanksgiving Assembly. The first act was devoted to celebrating the school’s efforts in composting and recycling.

Kaat Vander Straeten

On Nov. 23, the Claypit Hill School gym filled up with students and parents for its Thanksgiving Assembly. The first act was devoted to celebrating the school’s efforts in composting and recycling.

Green Team members Molly Faulkner and Andrea Case, aided by a fifth-grader named Renée, performed Shel Silverstein’s poem “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout would not take the garbage out.” The point was of course that most of the “garbage” in the poem is not garbage at all, but compost and recyclables.

The students at Claypit knew this already, because they have been sorting their cafeteria output into three distinct waste streams (food scraps, recycling and trash) since the beginning of the school year.

What they were surprised to hear is that they have, to date, collected no less than one ton, or 2,000 pounds, of food scraps in the bins behind the school, where it is turning into rich compost for the school gardens.

Faulkner brought smiles to little faces when she made these numbers concrete by likening that amount, in weight, to one-and-a-half cars, a killer whale, a hippopotamus, or 40 average third graders.

As for recycling, until this fall everything except the milk bottles went into the trash, from whence it was trucked to the incinerator. Now Claypit Hill collects every scrap of recycling – plastic bottles and cups, drink pouches, aluminum foil, straws, tin cans, etc. – amounting to about half of all the stuff that used to be thrown away at lunchtime. That is enough to fill half of a classroom, from floor to ceiling.

The Green Team thanked the students for their phenomenal work and also called to the front the custodian, Jose DaSilva.

DaSilva is the one who gets the recyclables ready for town pickup and takes the food scraps to the bins, where he makes sure they are well mixed with enough browns. He was applauded by all and gladly received his homemade dirt cake.

For more information on these Green Team programs, or to volunteer, go online (www.waylandgreenteam.org).